1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of microelectronics, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for improving the data throughput over a cellular network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The cell phone industry is undergoing exponential growth, not only in this country, but all over the world. In fact, it is well known that the over twenty percent of the adult population in the United States do not even have a traditional landline telephone. In addition to those who do not own a conventional telephone, nearly ninety percent of the adult population owns a wireless phone.
And the usage of cell phones is increasing as well over the use of traditional landline telephone coverage. In fact, one in seven adults now uses only cell phones. Whereas in the past cell phones were used when a landline was not available or under emergency conditions, lower carrier rates, affordability of family packages, and free mobile-to-mobile or friend-to-friend promotions have fostered in significant increases in usage. It is not uncommon today to walk into any public forum or facility and notice a majority of the people there talking on their cell phones.
The ability to communicate using a mobile phone, or mobile station, has been available since the middle of the last century. However, during the 1990's so-called “2G” or second generation mobile phone systems were provided that began the growth in both deployment and usage that we currently enjoy today. These initial systems predominately provided for the routing and reliable servicing of voice calls between parties. And, as one skilled in the art will appreciate, there are a number of timing and latency requirements associated with transmission and reception of voice data in order to maintain quality of service.
And although wireless cellular network technologies have continued to provide improvements related to the ability to process voice calls, there has also been an enormous pull on the industry to provide improvements related to the number of calls and quality of calls that can be processed. One such technique is known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) employs multiple antennas on both mobile stations (i.e., cell phones) and their base stations to achieve these goals. However, the problems inherent in employing single antenna systems are only exacerbated when more than one transmitter/receiver pair is involved.
Accordingly, what is needed is a technique that enables a cellular data network to process increasing amounts of voice and data traffic in a system that utilizes MIMO techniques.
In addition, what is needed is an apparatus and method for a base station, or access network to direct a given cell phone, or access terminal to adjust the relative phase, delay, and/or power that is being transmitted via one or more of a plurality of transmit antennas.